


Five times Bodhi Rook smiled when he wanted to cry, and one time he cried when he wanted to smile

by imsfire



Series: Celebrate Rogue One characters 2018 [8]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Bodhi needs a hug, Fear, Five Times and One, Gen, Grief, Unrequited Love, a son's love for his mother, guilt and unhappiness, hiding one's true feelings, putting others first
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 17:23:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14981945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Bodhi Rook has hidden his emotions so many times.





	Five times Bodhi Rook smiled when he wanted to cry, and one time he cried when he wanted to smile

**Author's Note:**

> For Week three, day four of Celebrate Rogue One; Bodhi and smiles/tears.  
> Some details of the backstory I've written for him are slightly different to canon.

**1 The application**

It was his dream, but he knew it wasn’t hers.  His mother had put on a calm face and a smile, and said she was proud of him for applying, for having the courage to follow his ambitions.  But Bodhi knew; she didn’t want him to go to the Academy.  It was true that it was the best flight training that talent could win or money could buy.  But if he passed the entrance interview, and the training, and qualified as a fighter pilot, he’d be flying the Empire’s machines of war.

Mother would cry, that her only son would do such a thing.  He knew she’d hide it when he came home on leave, but she’d still cry and he’d still know.  The guilt ate at him.  He’d never wanted anything more than to make her proud, and to fly, like his father.  But it seemed that his two dreams could not co-exist.

And now it wasn’t going to happen anyway. He’d thought the interview and the entrance exam went well, and he wasn’t sure of the specifics of why he’d been turned-down.  It looked like a technicality of some kind, but when he queried it he’d been assured smoothly that there was no point in appealing, or in re-applying. 

The Imperial Academy on Carida did not want Bodhi Rook from the back alleys of NiJedha.

He went home to tell his mother the news, and to smile at her happiness, and at how kindly she tried to hide it and share his sorrow.

**2 The contract**

In the end, it made less difference than she’d hoped. 

He’d been working as a juice-seller in the street markets.  But the year after the Academy turned him down, Mother was ill.  She said it wasn’t serious, and went on saying so, while her face grew pale as amber and her strong weaver’s hands and muscular arms got thinner.  The treatment was rest and visits to the hot springs, she said.  It was half a year before he found out she needed more; needed herbs and drugs, and the cost of all that was eating up her savings, that she’d always insisted were for family weddings or grandchildren’s birth-gifts. 

She needed drugs, and she needed radiation treatment at the new Imperial hospital.  All this, to be paid-for from the cloth merchants’ money she could no longer earn, and what he could get on a fruit-stand? 

Bodhi went to the recruitment centre for Cargo Inter and asked about openings.  He was hoping to get a chance as a driver, maybe, but they said “nothing here”

He turned away, making himself smile courteously while his heart wept. 

And then behind him, the man said “But you could try at the Imperial Merchant Service, they’re looking for local trainees.”

His wages would come home monthly, as a contracted Imperial Trainee cargo pilot, but he wouldn’t be able to return until the training was finished.  He was going to get to fly after all.  But he’d be working for the Occupation Forces; and he wouldn’t be here to be with his Mother, now when she needed him most.

He could only hope his betrayal would be enough to save her.

**3 The crush**

The sky on Bamayar was rose pink every morning, and bright with white thunderheads.  The countryside around the training base was peaceful green farmland, gentle as paradise to a boy from the cold deserts of Jedha.  It rained almost daily, brief cloudbursts that raised a perfume from the earth.  It was very beautiful.

Human beauty was another thing entirely. 

He hadn’t been particularly interested in anyone here on Bamayar until now.  What were nice eyes and good skin and regular features, if the person inside was neither interesting nor good, nor compatible?  But now he’d met someone who…  Dear Sweet Force Alive, someone who was all of this and more!  Miraculously kind and funny, interesting and intelligent, articulate, friendly; rueful about politics, fascinated by their training, longing as much as Bodhi was to qualify and fly, homesick as much as him too, dreaming of the chance to go home on leave?

And already in a relationship.  Settled, stable and happy.

 _I wish things could have been different_ , he thought for the hundredth time, _I wish, I wish_ ; watching them go by, smiling and talking on their comm, and carefree, and laughing.  _I wish you had been free, and had liked me as much as I like you.  I wish you had wanted to get to know me better, as I wanted to get to know you._

_I can live with this.  At least I’ve known you, at least I’ve known there are people like you in the galaxy.  Everyone gets rejected at some point, don’t they?_

He would get drunk that night, and he’d smile and laugh and smile again, pretending it didn’t matter; and he’d wake up in the morning and still be the one who wasn’t wanted. 

**4 The visit**

He finished his training, got his first deployment, and worked his first sixteen weeks; then got a two-day furlough.

Mother was thinner than ever; and she seemed to have shrunk.  Her chin used to rest on his shoulder but now she had a struggle to raise her head that far.  Was it that she’d got smaller?  Or simply that the last time she gave him a full embrace, he was still a boy, not yet full-grown…

He’d cry like a boy, even now, at the thought of how long it may be before he’d feel her arms go round him again.  But a man wouldn’t weep, a man would smile and say loving things, reassuring words. 

So that was what he did, the morning he arrived, and the evening he left again.

**5 The realisation**

“I can survive in space,” the droid said.  Cool as an ice-fish and twice as salty, as usual.

It was at least easy to smile and act as if it was a joke.  But he knew, for all that, that this was a suicide mission.  Maybe the end would be out here, in the infinite cold dark.  Maybe it would be down there in the hot bright blue of Scarif; drowned in that sea, or burnt to ashes by some ‘trooper’s weapons.  But one way or another they were all going to die. 

K-2 was a humourist, though, in his sharp, snarky way, and Bodhi grinned at him and patted his chassis.  “Good chap,” he said matily. 

Good chap.  Good people.  Like the Captain, like Galen’s daughter and the Guardians, like all the rest of them back there in the hold.

They were all going to die.

**6 A new hope**

It should have been a moment of pure happiness.  They’d made it, their message sent, received, lost and retrieved; and used.  A new hope was born in the galaxy; and born in him.  Hope; after everything he’d lost and everything he’d given.  He thought of Mother, whose grave was dust now; and his sisters, his home, his neighbours and friends, all dust with her.  He thought of Galen Erso who’d risked and sacrificed all to take the one chance given him.

Everything lost, every pain endured, had been for this. 

It should have felt like a sunrise. 

But lying in the Med-bay on board the Mon Cala flagship, looking at the faces of his friends, weary, shattered, battered as his own, and knowing the taste of joy for the first time in a decade, Bodhi Rook cried.


End file.
